Tag: FRx

In Microsoft Dynamics GP, FRx has a Management Reporter (MR) migration wizard that will bring over reports into the new Management Reporter system. With a FRx migration, formatting usually comes over clean, but there are other differences between how this data is shown within the Row and Tree formats that may need some manual intervention.

In FRx, only the account number were referenced in the Financial Dimension link column within the row format.

FRx example:

15000

FRx ranges were indicated as follows:

(11511 TO 11599)

In MR, they reference the account segment name as well. When indicating a range, TO is no longer used.

MR example:

+Main Account = [15000]

MR ranges are indicated as follows:

+Main Account = [11511:11599]

The best way to quickly update these, is to copy the entire Financial Dimension column into Excel. First, do a find and replace for parenthesis and replace with brackets. Find ‘(‘ and replace with ‘[‘. Find ‘)’ and replace with ‘]’. Next, add a column for the plus (+) or negative (–) sign, the account segment name and the equal sign (=). Add the closing bracket in a separate column and then concatenate all three columns together to form what is shown in the examples above.

HINT: When entering ‘+Main Account = ‘ in Excel – it will give you an error because it thinks it is a calculation. Enter an apostrophe (‘) prior to the plus sign and it will recognize it as text.

This will get you most of the way there! Unfortunately there can still be some issues with the codes used in the Format Code column. In addition to replacing the TO with a colon as shown above, we often times need to update the TOT code as well. TOT was used a lot in FRx, but if we are adding two totals together in MR, we need to use the CAL format code and update the row references to include an ampersand (@) prior to the number.

FRx example:

TOT 520 TO 820

TOT 1480 + 1690

MR example:

TOT 520:820

TOT @1480+@1690

Hope this helps everyone update their MR reports! If you need help updating MR reports, Tridea Partners would be happy to help! Our team has decades of experience in Dynamics GP!

This article was written by Kaydee Baker, Dynamics GP Application Consultant for Tridea Partners. Tridea is a leading Microsoft Dynamics provider serving CA, AZ, UT, CO, New England and surrounding regions.

With the release of Microsoft Dynamics 2010, Microsoft has also released their new reporting tool, Management Reporter, to replace FRx 6.7. While Microsoft is requiring all new Dynamics GP 2010 customers to utilize Management Reporter, existing users running prior versions of Dynamics GP can continue to use FRx 6.7, even with an upgrade to Dynamics GP 2010. Microsoft will continue to support FRx 6.7 through the end of the Dynamics GP 10.0 lifecycle.

Management Reporter has several new features which gives it an edge over FRx. It allows for windows authentication, version management of the reports and supports reporting on dimensions based data such as departments, locations, and cost centers. Additionally multicurrency reporting in Management Reporter is now driven from existing rate tables within Dynamics GP 2010, eliminating the need to maintain separate rate tables to facilitate this kind of reporting.

Additional features that users have been asking for in FRx, such as column breaks, undo and redo function and the ability to import images into the header and footer of the reports are now available in Management Reporter.

There are a few limitations of Management Reporter that should be considered in making the decision to upgrade, however there are available workarounds to mitigate these shortcomings.

With all of its new features Management Reporter still utilizes many of the same concepts as FRx enabling users to apply their FRx knowledge as they transition to Management Reporter. It has a similar look and feel for the setup of rows, columns and reporting trees with a slight variation of terminology. The dropdown boxes in the row and column definitions will provide selection FRx users are familiar with and have a few new selections of added functionality. A migration wizard is available to convert existing row, column, tree and report definitions, report catalogs, account sets and company information to new Report Definitions in Management Reporter, making the transition fairly seamless.